Friday, August 26, 2011

Oh what a difference a few years makes

Coming up on the second anniversary of James Murdoch's famous blast at the BBC during the Edinburgh TV festival and the MacTaggart lecture. Rereading the first page is ironic enough. James looked rather uncomfortable then, reading from two autocue screens and trying to sound natural. Murdoch described UK broadcasting as "the Addams Family of world media", comparing it unfavourably with the industries in Germany, France and India and complaining about the "astonishing" burden of regulation placed on BSkyB, the pay-TV giant he was running at the time. The Media Guardian has luckily curated the whole lot, and the BBC's reply.